Isabella Gibbons

Isabella Gibbons (c. 1836 – February 4, 1890) was an enslaved woman serving as a cook at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Virginia. After she was freed in 1865 she became a teacher.

Isabella's birth date, place of birth, and parents are unknown. About 1850 she was purchased by William Barton Rogers, a professor of natural philosophy (science) at the University who later founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was his family's cook until 1853. She apparently was taught to read by Emma Savage Rogers. In the early 1850s she married William Gibbons, also an enslaved laborer owned by a university professor. They had four children; one was named Bella.

In 1853 Rogers was replaced as professor of natural philosophy by Francis Henry Smith, and Gibbons was the cook for Smith's family until 1863.

She acted as nurse at the Confederate military hospital set up at the university.

She and her husband were freed when General Philip Sheridan's troops reached Charlottesville, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation with them, on March 3, 1865 (see Liberation and Freedom Day).

She became a teacher at the Freedmen's School; its direct descendant is the Jefferson School. Newspaper reports speak positively of her:

We have four teachers at Charlottesville, and Miss Anna Gardner has taken the more advanced pupils whom she is forming into a normal [teacher training] class. One of her pupils has also aided her in teaching, Mrs. Isabella Gibbins. Although the mother of several children, whom she must aid in supporting, she wishes to perfect her own education and become a teacher of her people. She is doubly precious to our hearts, as the devoted nurse of one of the noblest and best-beloved of our young officers, who died a prisoner in rebel hands.

She received similar praise in 1867 and 1869. The last reference to her as a Charlottesville teacher is from 1874.